BARCELONA—Not everyone can afford a high-end smartphone. So on Monday, Nokia announced the Lumia 610, the first Windows Phone based on the lower-cost Qualcomm MSM7x27 chipset, along with three new Asha feature phones.

The company also announced an international version of the Nokia Lumia 900 with HSPA+ 42, although Nokia was careful to say that it wasn't for the U.S.

The Lumia 610 announcement appeared to be a stealth launch of a new Windows Phone OS version commonly known as "Tango," which brings Windows Phone to less expensive handsets by allowing it to run on the 7x27 processor and in only 256MB of RAM. Microsoft also got on stage to say a new beta of Skype for Windows Phone would be available today, one of 65,000 apps now available for the company's smartphone platform.

Tango may not even turn out to be a point release for Microsoft. "The Nokia Lumia 610 was made possible thanks to a new software release from Microsoft delivering enhanced capabilities to the Windows Phone 7.5 platform," Nokia's press release says.

So how is the Lumia 610? Pretty, but definitely slower than I'm used to from Windows Phones—although I couldn't tell 100 percent if that was because of the very congested network here in Barcelona. The 610's processor runs at 1GHz, but we're in "megahertz myth" territory now—this 1GHz is slower than the typical Windows Phone's 1GHz, and definitely slower than the 1.4GHz we're getting used to with newer Windows Phones.

That means I saw a significant lag when zooming in and out of Wikipedia's Web page, for instance. Interestingly, screen swipes and flips were still very smooth. That's down to the excellent programming behind Windows Phone's UI. It was within individual applications that I could feel the speed difference.

The 610 comes with a slick new public-transportation application, Nokia Transport, which lets you schedule your commute on buses and trains. That's a hint about its target market—it's aimed at places like southern Europe, Asia and Latin America.

The 610 has a 3.7-inch, 800-by-480 LCD screen (much like T-Mobile's Nokia 710) and 8GB of memory. There's no memory card slot. The phone connects to the Internet via HSDPA 7.2 and Wi-Fi. Notably, it has AT&T's 3G bands on board, so it could come out on AT&T. For the full specs, you can check out Nokia's site.

According to Nokia, the Lumia 610 has a 5-megapixel camera on the back and will sell for 189 euros, unsubsidized, when it comes out in the second quarter of this year. It comes in white, blue, and pink.

The Asha 202, 203 and 302 push forward Nokia's popular line of feature phones for the developing world, though it isn't impossible that they might come to the U.S. I recently saw Nokia's existing Asha phones being sold in the UK, for instance.

The 302 is the most compelling for U.S. consumers, as it's a petite white QWERTY phone without a touch screen, but with Microsoft Exchange email. Nokia pretty much has this design down by now: high-quality plastic, a rounded body, great sculptured keys, and a relatively basic screen. The 302 is the clear descendant of the huge global hit, the Nokia C3. But with a 1GHz processor and HSPA 14.4, it'll zip along like an almost-real, almost-smartphone.

The Asha 202 and 203 would be a harder sell in the U.S., as they're touch-and-type phones with traditional 9-button keypads and resistive touch screens. The touch screens are tiny and fiddly, especially if you've become used to the capacitive screens standard on most smartphones nowadays. The Asha 202 supports two SIM cards at once.

We aren't the main market for these phones, of course. They're aimed at countries like Nigeria, Kenya, India, and Brazil that have hundreds of millions of people who are generally buying prepaid phones without data plans. Nokia knows how to design services for those consumers—for instance, offering Nokia Life, a new service which lets you learn English or contact a doctor 24/7 via SMS.

The Asha 202 and 203 will also come with 40 EA games for free, including top titles like The Sims Medieval, Tetris and Need for Speed.

The Asha 202 and 203 are coming out in about six weeks and will cost 60 euros unsubsidized; the Asha 302 will cost 95 euros, and it's shipping now.

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 9 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts of the daily PCMag Live Web show and speaks frequently in mass media on cell-phone-related issues. His commentary has appeared on ABC, the BBC, the CBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, and in newspapers from San Antonio, Texas to Edmonton, Alberta.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer, having contributed...
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